While the cost of Thanksgiving dinner escalates annually, that hasn't stopped local families from preparing the traditional meal with all the trimmings.

With coupons in hand, Mary Mitchell, Ringtown, headed to Weis Markets in the Pottsville Park Plaza on Thursday to buy two 20-pound turkeys.

"My mom will be asking people in the street to come to Thanksgiving, because the more, the merrier," Mitchell's daughter, April, said Thursday. "She tells everybody to bring everybody and we all bring stuff. I think we'll at least have 25 people at dinner."

"We're having 10 people over for dinner but leftovers are a must," she said. "You cook one day on Thursday and you're done for the weekend."

Even though inflation, Mother Nature and the federal government's ethanol laws have been putting pressure on turkey producers and consumers this year, Duane L. Koch, vice president and general manager of Koch's Turkey Farm & Store, said business is good.

"Thanksgiving is just one of those special holidays where people still want it to be the best they can make it," he said. "In 2008, even though we had the economic crisis, our Thanksgiving sales were still as good as the year before."

A feast of turkey, stuffing and all the classic sides will cost an average of $49.48 for 10 people, up 28 cents from last year, according to a survey from the American Farm Bureau Federation, Washington, D.C. The results are listed at the bureau's website at www.fb.org.

"The big ticket item - the 16-pound turkey - came in at $22.23 this year," according to the federation's website. "That was roughly $1.39 per pound, an increase of about 4 cents per pound, or a total of 66 cents per whole turkey, compared to 2011. The whole bird was the biggest contributor to the final total, showing the largest price increase compared to last year."

Turkey business

Turkey is a $13 billion business in the United States, Joel Brandenberger, president of the National Turkey Federation, said Wednesday.

There were 248.5 million turkeys raised in the U.S. in 2011, including 7.5 million in Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania is one of the top 10 turkey-producing states, coming in ninth, according to eatturkey.com, the website for The National Turkey Federation, a national advocate for all segments of the turkey industry. The top 10 are, beginning at No. 1: Minnesota, North Carolina, Arkansas, Missouri, Virginia, Indiana, California, South Carolina, Pennsylvania and Ohio, according to the federation's website.

Turkey producers in Pennsylvania raised 7.4 million turkeys in 2010 and 7.5 million in 2011.

"In 2011, U.S. consumption of turkey was 16.1 pounds per person," according to the federation. "Turkey production has increased nearly 110 percent since 1970 - the total value of turkey processors' production in 2009 reached $16.3 billion and U.S. growers raised 248.5 million turkeys in 2011."

Looking back to 2010, Koch said he started off the year with optimism. Then, grain prices went up that January and February.

"It was disheartening. Grain impacts our business. It's like 80 percent of our cost," Koch said in February 2011.

In 2012, it has gotten worse, he said.

In July, punishing heat put more than half of the U.S. in some drought stage, while the rest of the country endured abnormally dry conditions, according to The Associated Press.

"Nationally, it has been a challenging year for the turkey business," Brandenberger said.

"It's gotten harder because grain's been higher for pretty much the whole year," Koch said. "Corn's been running $7.30 to $7.50 a bushel, that's locally at harvest. It was lower last year but I don't remember the price."

At quotecorn.com, the cost of a bushel of corn was $7.25 on Thursday.

"Six years ago, corn was less than $3 a bushel," Brandenberger said. "And just last year, corn dipped below $5 a bushel."

This summer's drought is one reason why the cost increased.

"The nation's corn crop is supposed to be around 13 billion bushels. This year, it's just over 10 billion bushels," Brandenberger said. "Corn yields (are) at their lowest in many, many years, and the quality of the corn crop has diminished because of the heat stress."

A bushel of corn normally weighs 56 pounds.

"In some areas now, it weighs like 52 or 53 pounds, and the reason that's significant is corn is sold by the bushel," Brandenberger said. "And feed is measured by weight. So corn makes up 60 percent in turkey feed ration. So if corn is suddenly weighing 5 to 6 percent less per bushel than it normally does, that's 5 or 6 percent more corn by volume that the turkey producers need to purchase to achieve the same feed value."

Brandenberger estimated the drought cost the national turkey industry about a quarter of a billion dollars in additional expenses.

Another issue the federation frowns upon is a mandate the federal government put in place in 2006.

"A specific amount of corn-based ethanol must be blended into gasoline every year," Brandenberger said. "For 2012, that's 13.2 billion gallons of ethanol. That translates into better than four billion bushels of corn that have been diverted into fuel production.

"That's roughly 40 percent of the corn crop that was harvested last year. It's been estimated that 4.6 billion bushels of corn will be used for ethanol this year, and that's more than 40 percent of the crop."

Looking ahead

To survive in 2010, Koch's had to cut out some middle management.

On Thursday, Koch said he isn't anticipating anymore cuts but he's concerned about grain prices and if it will change the way he does business.

"It just doesn't seem our country wants to cut back on ethanol at all. It just doesn't make sense to me to use food to make energy," he said. "It's going to affect everybody's pocketbooks. There's been a lot of companies, especially on the chicken side, go out of business because of the high grain prices, and I see that trend continuing. And the only way companies like ourselves are going to be able to stay in business is to be able to get price increases to compensate for higher grain costs."

But Brandenberger is optimistic.

"I think the long-term prospect is bright. I think every time one of these crises hit periodically, it's just part of the free-market system, which is why ethanol frustrates us," he said. "But in a free-market system, there are times when businesses do well and businesses do poorly. I've worked for this industry for 20 years and every time this industry has suffered a downturn, it's been able to recover from it quicker than the previous downturn."

Koch is also concerned about how times and trends change. "When I came back home to work at the family business 16 years ago, our Christmas sales were 26 percent of what Thanksgiving was," he said. "Last year, Christmas was only 11 percent of what Thanksgiving was. So turkey at Christmas is diminishing but turkey at Thanksgiving has remained strong."

INFO BOX

Between 1986 and 2012, the cost of a Thanksgiving dinner to feed a family of 10 has gone up from $28.74 to $49.48, according to research conducted by the American Farm Bureau Federation, Washington D.C. Here is the list, by year and price:

1986 - $28.74

1987 - $24.51

1988 - $26.61

1989 - $24.70

1990 - $28.85

1991 - $25.95

1992 - $26.39

1993 - $27.49

1994 - $28.40

1995 - $29.64

1996 - $31.66

1997 - $31.75

1998 - $33.09

1999 - $33.83

2000 - $32.37

2001 - $35.04

2002 - $34.56

2003 - $36.28

2004 - $35.68

2005 - $36.78

2006 - $38.10

2007 - $42.26

2008 - $44.61

2009 - $42.91

2010 - $43.47

2011 - $49.20

2012 - $49.48

Source: http://www.fb.org

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